


Always and Never/Fire and Earth

by epersonae



Series: Aftermath [17]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Background Magcretia, Background Taagnus, Background blupjeans - Freeform, F/F, Post-Canon, talking about feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-17
Updated: 2017-08-17
Packaged: 2018-12-16 09:07:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11825523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epersonae/pseuds/epersonae
Summary: For Lucretia, Lup is moments scattered across time, always near, never close.





	1. Before

**Author's Note:**

> For H. A., wherever you are.

She was always fascinated and intimidated by Lup, from the first time she saw her. But her times with Lup, they were flashes. They were moments. Scattered across time like stars in the vastness of space, like freckles on Lup's warm skin.

And Barry… Barry was steady. Barry was constantly turning towards Lup, constantly growing towards her, always hers, and of course she responded to that. 

So Lucretia let herself drift, let herself be sometimes, and moments, and something in between. She drifted into a different orbit, with Taako, around their own glowing sun, captured by Magnus and his big heart and strong hands. And sometimes, over a hundred years, orbits crossed and collided, and there were moments. 

When Lup left, she wasn't in the circle that got to — had to — feel the force of it. She wasn't Taako seeking out his twin, and she wasn't Barry aching for his greatest love. She hadn't shared a womb or undeath with Lup. Just…moments. Just…a hundred years of friendship and shared smiles and little pangs of want that sometimes went answered and sometimes not. 

She thought about the city of robots, turned that moment over in her head again and again.  _ I’m not gonna destroy a whole world. I don’t care if our enemy gets a hundred times stronger as a result of it.  _ And they had hurt so many: was it enough to say they had destroyed this world? 

She thought about Lup, who wasn't her true love or her other half, but the woman she admired most, fire that burned true. And Lucretia, she was earth, steady, one solid idea, one way forward. 

 

Lup is phantasmal and resplendent. Lup knows how to make an entrance. Taako gives her a dramatic entrance, and Barry offers to kill himself to be with her. Meanwhile, Lucretia is in her own separate bubble. Alone again.

She's ready for Lup's fury or vengeance. She's ready for Lup to hate her, a little, maybe, like Taako had. (Like Taako does?) And then Lup talks to her in what honestly Lucretia thinks of as Barry's voice: reason and sincerity and oh Lucretia honey you're doing it all wrong. 

So she disappears. She's steady and calm and she set herself a task. Not even a woman on fire is going to change her mind, not yet. 

A third way, that changes her mind, a new idea that none of them had considered before that very instant.  _ I've already forgotten.  _ And it's like Lup, she thinks, to give the moment a shape that's both forgiveness and rebuke. 

But Lup's gone again so quickly, off to fight the end of the world, with Barry at her side, and the boy, Angus, looking up at her, that face open in admiration, turning to Lup like everyone does, warming their hearts by her fire. 


	2. After

Later, Lup's hand was on her knee, as it had been in other moments, a long time ago. Lup has a hand again, two of them, a whole fresh body. Lup was sitting beside her, and it was just the two of them, she didn’t bring Barry, didn’t bring Taako. Angus is here, but he’s off roaming the library on his own, his first day in his new home for the next few months.

She had a balcony in her new office, in this building that overlooked just a city and not the whole world, and the balcony had two chairs, so she could show the view to a guest. Like Lup, visiting Neverwinter, ostensibly to bring Angus to visit, but the kid was gone and they were sitting together, watching a world gone by.

They’ve watched worlds go by before, they’ve had moments, usually when Barry was gone and Taako was away and Magnus was elsewhere. Like now.

She looked sidelong at Lup: the wild hair, the pointed ears with a whole array of rings and dangles, the spatter of freckles. Elves don’t age like humans, and Lucretia looked down at her hands, the wrinkling around her knuckles. Time has given and taken, and sometimes she has a hard time remember how to be anchored in time.

She rested her hand on Lup’s hand, though, and Lup didn’t twitch away. She sighed, contentedly, maybe.

“They keep telling me you’re the bad guy,” said Lup, finally.

“They?”

“Taako, mostly, and Davenport.” Lucretia made a soft noise; at some point she’d stopped saying she was sorry. “And Barry doesn’t say it, but you…. You made a ward just to keep him out of your crazy moon base, Lucy-lu. I mean, he’s a let bygones be bygones kinda guy, but….” She arched an eyebrow. A perfectly shaped eyebrow.

“You left and they all went crazy,” she said, immediately regretting it. “I mean. No. That’s not how I mean it.”

“You’ve got something, though. I had a long time to think, obviously.”

Lucretia swallowed another apology and waited for what Lup was going to say next.

“I went off half-cocked.” She frowned. “Do you know how many times I’ve heard Taako bitch and moan about how you took away his choice?”

Lucretia let out a long breath, not trusting herself to say anything.

“Yup, about that many. You know how much I trusted him and Barry to know what I was gonna do to hide the fucking gauntlet? About the same. And how much do they say to me about it? Basically nothing. S’fucking bullshit.”

“You left and it took the fire out of them. They’re just happy you’re back; they’re happy you are. They never missed me. I didn’t let them.”

“I missed you, Luce.” Lucretia’s nostrils flared; she tried to hold back her first thought: I don’t believe you, and the pettiness underneath that: the feeling of being third or fourth or nothing. Lup put her other hand on top of Lucretia’s. “Hey, babe, say something?”

But Lucretia stood and leaned on the railing. Lup followed and put her arm around Lucretia, who struggled with the impulse to shake her off.

“I’ve been...angry...with you, and I guess Barry too” in her head it’s all one word LupAndBarry “since…”

“Yeah?”

She turns and looks Lup in the face, maybe for the first time in twenty years.

“Since the Arcanium. That long. Everything is over, and I’m still angry, Lup. Why am I still so angry?”

Lup took Lucretia's face in her hands, held it steady even when Lucretia tried to pull away. 

“I see you, Luce. Babe, Lucretia dear, I've always seen you. And I'm so sorry that we didn't — that  _ I  _ didn't” and her expression crumpled “listen, or try, or you know, something.” She put her forehead against Lucretia's and stroked her hair. “Be as angry as you want, hon.  _ Those who mind _ …”

“... _ don't matter, and those who matter don't mind.  _ That fucking book.”

“My fucking goofus brother, more like. It's true, though, voidfish don't take no junk.”

Lup wrapped her arms around Lucretia, and little by little, the tension drained out of her, until the two were simply quiet and still, the noise of Neverwinter far below. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to nekosd43 for the title, which got me started. Thanks to anonymousalchemist for some well-timed advice, and to the gang for the encouragement.


End file.
